culty. However,
Robin's gift for stage-management was sufficient to meet the emergency.
When all was ready Dolly calmly mounting the steps of the font to an
eminence which commanded a precarious but sufficient view of the body of
the church, briefly fluttered a scrap of lace handkerchief, and then
stepped demurely down into her place at the head of the bridesmaids.
Simultaneously the organ burst into the opening strains of Mendelsohn's
march--I suppose Robin had been waiting at some point of vantage to pass
the signal on--and we advanced up the aisle, amid a general turning of
heads and flutter of excitement.

The church was packed. In the back pew I remember noticing three young
men with pads of flimsy paper and well-sucked pencils. I distinctly
caught sight of the words "Sacred edifice" in the nearest MS., and I
have no doubt the others contained it as well.

But Dilly was still quaking on my arm, and the only other spectacle
which attracted my attention on the way up the aisle was that of my wife
(looking very like a bride herself, I thought), sitting in a front pew
with Master Gerald, that infant phenomenon shining resplendently in a
white waistcoat and a "buttonhole" which almost entirely obscured his
features. Then I caught sight of Robin's towering shoulders and the pale
face and glassy eye of the bridegroom, and I knew that we had brought
our horses to the water at last, and all that now remained to do was to
make them drink.

The rest of the ceremony passed off with due impressiveness, if we
except a slight _contretemps_ arising from the behaviour of my daughter,
who, suddenly remembering that the junior bridesmaid but one had not yet
passed any opinion on her new shoes, suddenly sat down on the bride's
train, and, thrusting the shoes into unmaidenly prominence, audibly
invited that giggling damsel's approbation of the same. However, the
ever-ready organ drowned her utterance with a timely Amen, and Dicky and
Dilly completed the plighting of their troth with becoming shyness but
obvious sincerity.

Then came the inevitable orgy of osculation in the vestry, from which I
escaped with nothing worse, so to speak, than a few scratches, despite
an unprovoked and unexpected flank attack (when I was signing the
register) from an elderly female in bugles, whom I at first took to be a
rather giddy pew-opener, but who ultimately proved to be a maiden aunt
of the bridegroom's.

After Dicky and Dilly--the latter mirac